58
“How long havewe been doing this?” Holly tried to straighten up, but her back was hurting her worse than after a 20K hike with a full ruck.
“Since birth,” Mike groaned.
She grabbed Mike’s wrist and looked at his watch. “We landed on this bucket of bolts carrier twelve hours ago. Twenty hours puts us back to Alaska. Twenty-seven to arriving there. Thirty to Tacoma. Bed was—”
“Forever ago.”
She dropped to sit on the hangar’s deck and Mike collapsed beside her.
“What are we doing now anyway?”
Holly looked at the wreck but couldn’t remember. She simply kept picking up pieces and trying to turn them back into the airplane. The pickings were now so meager that they were scrounging through theUnknownpile again. Placing a piece earned a high-five no matter how small.
Mike flopped onto his back, then rolled up a shoulder. She reached under it, pulled out a three-inch section of hydraulic line, that curiously she could picture exactly where it belonged. It couldn’t, it simplycouldn’tbe important enough to stand up to place it. Closing it in her fist, she lay her head on Mike’s shoulder and closed her eyes.
“You feel mighty good, Hol.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true. I could make a habit of this.”
“If that’s a proposal, I’m going to have to hurt you.”
“Why would it be so awful?”
“Because!” It was the only answer she had. They’d been sleeping together for over a year. A several-fold new record for her. Even while lying exhausted past breathing, on the steel deck of a battered aircraft carrier, Mike felt good.
She was almost asleep when she heard the captain approaching. Her gait had shifted since being promoted, it was quite distinct.
“You two need to take a bunk. You’ve earned some shuteye.”
“Can’t,” Mike mumbled against her ear.
She patted his chest in thanks for saving her the energy of responding.
“And if I make it an order?”
“No authority.” Mike muttered.
“We don’t work for you,” Holly agreed, then hated herself. So tired, and she’d wasted a slice of her slim reserves to repeat the sentiment. Miranda wouldn’t have approved of such waste.
Her phone rang. It was impossibly far away, in her vest pocket. And her vest was hanging way over by the engine air intake housing.
“You answer it,” Holly said to Mike.
“It’s your phone.”
“And to think I was falling for your protestations of taking care of me for an eternity.”
“I’m more a one-lifetime-at-a-time kind of guy.”
“Welsher. Con artist.”
“Sure. At least I used to be,” Mike sighed for good times long gone when he actually had been a stooge for the FBI.
“Are either of you going to answer that?”